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  “Eydis,” the Sussurat responded.

  “I’m incapacitated,” she said. “In the Ulltrian ship. I think I can… interfere with its function.”

  There was a grunt from the Sussurat, followed by sounds of impacts clattering against Bria’s suit so violently that they were picked up and transmitted over the Sussurat’s suit radio, as if the massive creature tumbled down a cliff.

  “Commander?” she called. “Commander? Commander?”

  After a few moments, the Sussurat answered, her voice strained. “Broke through ice.”

  “You’re… outside? On the ship while it rises?”

  Bria grunted again. “Stop ship, if can.”

  “I’ll try,” Eydis said. She had only one trick: the shut down attack, the same she had used before. It was an old trick, as old as computation itself: send through the ship’s systems a program that propagated itself while constantly demanding emergency cessation of all functions and constantly demanding more resources for itself. It had worked once, and the Ulltrian had overcome the attack by directly seeking out and deleting the offending programs. The fact that the Ulltrian wrongly assumed she was incapacitated filled her with hope that it was too arrogant to have taken steps to prevent the attack again. She made slight changes to the program, and then broadcast it to the ship.

  She felt nothing: her sensory deprivation remained complete. She had hoped that the attack might free her from whatever kind of prison bound her now. She fought disappointment as she read off the system reports.

  For a moment nothing happened. And then, like stars winking out in a cloudy sky, ship systems began to go dark in her virtual workspace. System after system faded into quiet. Engine controls failed, and the emergency warnings began to ring. The space gnasher fell.

  _____

  Tarkos watched in shock as the Ulltrian ship above him rushed through the dark sea, making luminescent plankton swirl violently into twin tornado wakes—and then the ship hit the ice at its thickest place, lasers cutting at the ice only just as the ship made impact. The Ulltrian pilot must be desperate, he concluded—or might even be flying blind. Tarkos had no doubt that the tons of ice that smashed now around the black ship had damaged some of the probability flanges. Hopefully the impact did not also harm Bria.

  The ship broke through into black night. Great blocks of ice bobbed and tumbled on the surface, but the ship had cleared a path for the cruiser. Tarkos shot at the ice behind it. The cruiser shouldered through huge broken sheets to breach the surface. Black water froze into a thick crust along the sides of the cruiser, crackling and falling away.

  Tarkos shouted as a proximity alarm howled. He yanked back on the manual controls, his spine faster than his implants, and the cruiser reared back, just missing an impact with the Ulltrian ship, which dove down now across the cruiser’s nose.

  He had counted on the Ulltrian ship increasing its acceleration and shooting for orbit. Instead, the ship slid down toward the surface, yawing slightly, as if its engines were damaged. Its probability flanges had caught great chunks of ice, which seemed to weight the ship down even more, and these tumbled away as the ship leaned and dropped.

  Tarkos activated a single high precision laser. His first shot would be at the back of the ship, with a narrow and quick pulse. Hopefully Bria would be unscathed. But with the ship sliding and dropping, he couldn’t be sure any shot would be safe for his commander.

  “Hold fire,” Bria ordered.

  Tarkos gladly lifted his hand from the firing control. The Ulltrian ship threatened to tumble, before it righted itself and flew over the ice, neither dropping nor gaining altitude. He set the cruiser in pursuit.

  “Commander?” Tarkos called. He magnified the image of the ship. He saw Bria then: a small gray figure among the black metal flanges. She was already climbing down, using a line connected to one of the flanges to control her descent. He watched as she tried to work toward the lower hatch.

  “Eydis attempts to down ship,” Bria growled.

  Tears of relief welled in Tarkos’s eyes. Eydis was alive.

  “Pala?” he radioed.

  A faint signal came back.

  “I’m losing this fight,” she said, whether to him or Bria he could not tell. Her voice sounded strange, mechanical.

  The Ulltrian ship righted itself, seeming to struggle to lift again.

  “We need some way to disable it,” she said. “You’ll have to shoot it.”

  Tarkos frowned. How could he cut into it and be sure to miss Pala and Bria? He needed a more diffuse energy weapon, a systems disrupter, but the cruiser did not have anything that wouldn’t be lethal at this short range. He consider backing away a dozen klicks and using a high energy weapon, letting distance disperse the effect, but instantly he realized the idea was madness. He didn’t have time.

  Then an even crazier idea exploded in his mind, as he reached around and touched the controlled plasma weapon that he wore still on his hip; the one that Special Advisor Preeajitala had given him to destroy Tiklik, if necessary; the one that Pala had mercifully prevented him from using.

  He pushed the cruiser forward, till it hovered over the struggling Ulltrian ship. He told the cruiser’s mind to maintain this position, relative to the space gnasher, and to open the bottom hatch. He climbed out of his seat and ran for the opening. In the kit by the door he seized a grappling line, affixed it to his suit, hit the release switch that would let the line reel free, and then without hesitation he jumped through the hatch.

  He fell four meters down. His suit clasped him tightly as he fell, bracing for impact, but it could not slow the most of his mass. He slammed hard on the back of the Ulltrian ship between two flanges. Sharp pains shot through his ankles and knees.

  “Bria,” he said, “jump for the ice.”

  He didn’t wait to hear if his commander took his advice. He pulled the weapon from his side, opening the case as he did so. He could not hear it in the near vacuum of the surface, but it flickered blindingly bright with the evil blue glare of an arc torch. Again it struck Tarkos how it looked like a handle attached to ball lightening. The coherent sphere of plasma seethed and sputtered. As if punching the Ulltrian ship, Tarkos slammed the plasma against the probability flange to his left.

  The handle struck the black metal and held. He pulled his hand free, leaving the weapon in place. It seemed nothing had happened, nothing would happen, but then an explosive arc of electricity threw him backwards. He fell against another of the ship’s black flanges and gripped its rough surface. He sent the command to the cruiser to reel him in. The Ulltrian ship drifted upward, causing more slack in his line, and he stood there, watching as the coherent plasma seethed over the ship, spreading like some kind of white fire in the kindling of the flanges. The blaze approached him, nearly touched the feet of his suit—and then the line jerked taut and pulled him away, up toward the cruiser. As he swung free, he watched the plasma tentatively move around the joints of the probability flanges. It found some entrance through the surface, and quickly the fiery glow retreated into the metal and sank through the ship’s skin. Then the cruiser’s hatch occluded his view as the winch jerked him back inside.

  He looked down through the hatch as it slowly slipped closed. The false light view in his tactical displays showed the ice below as a blue surface soft to radar. Bria ran across the ice, moving on all fours, chasing after the Ulltrian ship as it crashed down onto the cold crust of the World Hammer.

  _____

  Bria leapt through a wall of snow thrown up by the ship as its landing gear gouged the surface. She rolled and without slowing continued to run. The ship turned slightly, scratching huge trenches in the ice as it ground to a halt.

  “Eydis,” Bria sent. “Eydis?”

  “I hear you,” the human woman said in English.

  Bria did not wait for a translation from her suit, but shouted, “Open door!”

  “The ship is rebooting all systems,” Eydis replied in Galactic. “But I’ll try.”<
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  Bria ducked under the Ulltrian ship’s hull. One of its tripod feet had broken in the crash, and the space gnasher lay on two legs and one long side of the hull. A bright crack appeared as the bottom door opened, spilling heat and the blue and yellow glow preferred by the Ulltrians. White crystals of fine snow, the moisture freezing out of the escaping atmosphere, blew around Bria and affixed to her helmet as she leapt for the door.

  One hand caught the edge. She gripped the door fiercely, her armored claw biting into the metal. She put her other hand flat against the hull. Using all the power assist in her armor and her own strength, she pulled down on the door, trying to speed its opening. Slowly, slowly, it opened enough for her to crawl through, her armor scraping on the hull as she pushed inside.

  As she tried to stand in the ship, a hard blow to her shoulder knocked her onto her face. She rolled and hit a panel of instruments. Sprawled there, she cleared her visor and with her own eyes looked up at the Ulltrian. It wore not armor but a thin silver vacuum suit, something that probably wrapped it automatically when decompression threatened. Its tail recoiled, winding up for another blow. Then a blur of metal stuck Bria’s face, obscuring her view.

  Bria’s armor protested as the robot clinging to her armor fired cutting lasers across her breast. She seized the robot and twisted, at the same time extruding the x-ray lasers embedded in each arm. The robot whipped its arms, clattering against her helmet, and then Bria fired a continuous beam from both arms as she bent the carapace until it split in two. She dropped four pieces of hissing metal.

  She stood, and the Ulltrian’s tale struck her in the chest, knocking her back against the wall. The tail struck again, but the aim went wide, over her shoulder.

  Bria dove. She brought both of her open claws together in a crushing blow to the Ulltrian’s front. Gas hissed from the suit as the pointed fingertips of Bria’s armor bit into the silver decompression suit and cut through to the flesh underneath. Atmosphere blew out in a violent gust, covering her visor with freezing ice crystals as white condensation clouded around her. The tail struck Bria again but now she had her feet planted and the blow did not move her, it did not even scratch her suit. She jammed one hand through the rent in the Ulltrian suit, fingers together like a blade. The Ulltrian screeched, a high-pitched, metallic sound that Bria actually felt through her suit.

  She shoved her hand through the Ulltrian’s eyes and straight into its long, folded brain. Then she fired the laser in her forearm and the Ulltrian went slack.

  Bria fell back, pulling her arm free, gore freezing on it in the near vacuum of the ship. She hissed at the Ulltrian.

  She’d done it. She’d killed it. It lay limp on the deck.

  Bria looked around the small cabin. No sign of Eydis, but a wide hatch separated this room from the back of the ship.

  “Eydis,” she transmitted.

  “I have visuals now, Commander,” Eydis said. Her voice was quiet, as if she were moving away. Or fading away. “I have visuals through the ship’s systems. I’m in the back. There is no atmosphere in here. You can come through.”

  Bria reached out and touched the door. It slid aside and diodes flickered on in a room shaped like a wide hall with concave walls. Bria stepped in, glaring warily.

  Rows of containers lined both sides of the hall. Clear cubes, with gray and green matter seething inside, covered the port side of the hall. But Bria sat back on her haunches and stared a long time at the boxes on the starboard side.

  “Sorry, human,” she finally said, very softly.

  “It’s quite a horror show,” Eydis transmitted in English. A translation streamed across Bria’s visor. Bria grunted agreement. She had seen many horrors in her years as a Predator. This was the worst.

  Eydis added in Galactic, “I’ve been dead for several minutes now. The quantum computers integrated with my brain can keep brain functions going for a while. But not for long. I guess you can say I’ve been dreaming that I was still alive.”

  Bria sighed and lifted one claw. “I hear you,” the Sussurat said. She could do nothing now but witness the passing of another warrior.

  The Ulltrian robots had disassembled Eydis, placing parts of her in various clear containers along the hall. Parts of the human floated in pale red fluid. The open torso was separated from each limb, and major organs floated in isolation on racks that reached to the ceiling. In the center sat Eydis’s head, the eyes and lower jaw removed.

  “I can read some of the data of this ship,” Eydis transmitted. “Your Executive may do better. Amir’s plasma weapon only harmed the engines, before it fully disappated. The ship’s mind is intact. I’ve stopped all its self-destruct protocols, and all its data-erasure programs. That wasn’t easy. I had to be very clever.”

  There was a strange sound, like a moan, before Eydis added, “Predator, the Ulltrians are going to attack. They’re going to attack everything now. But they have something special planned for Neelee-ornor. They seem so… confident. They must have something unexpected, something that we have not yet imagined.”

  After another pause, she transmitted, “Don’t let Amir in here, commander. I want him to remember me as I was.”

  Bria blinked agreement.

  “Sussurat,” Eydis transmitted, her voice fading. “Tarkos thinks you’re the most fierce warrior in the cosmos. And he thinks you’re honorable. So I’m hoping he’s right. And I’m hoping I’m wrong to think you have nothing but contempt for Tarkos and for the human race. Because I’m begging you, Predator: save Earth. Save the Alliance and save Earth.”

  Bria rose to her full height. The top of her helmet clicked against the ceiling. “On soil where my daughter is buried I swear to do, champion Eydis.”

  “I thought my life had reached its peak,” Eydis whispered, “on the Well of Furies. I thought I’d never do another thing worth singing about. But this is important, isn’t it, Sussurat? To get you one of these ships, with all its data and systems intact.”

  “Yes,” Bria hissed. “Most important.”

  Eydis said nothing more. Bria waited a while longer, until she felt sure the human had passed wholly from the living to the dead. Then she turned and took one of the clear sample containers that stood on the port side of the hall. Inside, a thick mix of gray and green material churned against the glass.

  Bria looked back once at Eydis, focussing her attention on the head.

  “You served Galaxy, and all life, well,” Bria growled. It was the finest eulogy she could imagine.

  She stepped back into the bridge, and closed the door behind her. It slammed like a stone falling into place.

  CHAPTER 11

  The explosion of gas into the starsleeve’s bridge threw the Ulltrian robots and the Kriani forward. They slammed into the glass screen covering the front wall. A gray network of cracks spread over the screen. Then they fell to the floor in a clattering heap: gravity had returned.

  Tiklik expected the onrushing atmosphere. It had braced itself, its feet firmly on the floor, the climbing pads gripping the metal. Helium, methane, and hydrogen roared in, a violent tornado that sent dozens of the starsleeve’s small service robots spinning past.

  The pressure equalized in seconds. Tiklik ran for the door.

  “Destroy it,” the Kriani broadcast, a command to its robots. Lasers burned across the hull in front of Tiklik, but then Tiklik was through the bridge door and out of their line of fire.

  Tiklik ran, its four limbs a blur as it rounded the bend. Before it, at the end of the hall, the hull breach gaped, a crude oval burned through the hull and all the intervening systems. Brown atmosphere howled outside, lit only dimly with the light of the ship’s interior. Tiklik slowed and gripped the floor carefully as it approached the maelstrom of wind. It crawled half way through the hole, two limb gripping the interior wall tightly, the other two scrambling for a grip on the nearest probability flange on the exterior of the ship.

  Just as it got a grip around one flange, one of its leg in the ship was
cut away, a laser severing it above the knee. Tiklik let go with the other leg and swung out, buffeted by the atmosphere. But its grip on the flange held. It pulled itself close to the hull, huddling against the base of the probability flange, shielded now from the turbulence.

  A portion of the Ulltrian ship still clung to the starsleeve: two black wings torn away from a body. Now the black wings scraped free, the sound audible in the atmosphere as their tips sparked against the starsleeve’s hull, and then the fragment of the Ulltrian ship shot upwards as the wings bit into the atmosphere.

  The robots from the bridge flung through the hull breach. They came too fast, were caught in the wind, and drawn out into the atmosphere before they could secure themselves. The thin black forms bounced past Tiklik, their arms flailing as they tumbled away.

  The Kriani came next. It slid into the breach, but it flung its six legs wide and held to the starsleeve, braced against the seared hull. It transmitted a frantic distress call to its own ship, the transmission repeating and enormously powerful, a radio scream.

  “The portion of your ship that is here is not functional,” Tiklik transmitted to the Kriani.

  The Kriani turned its armored head towards Tiklik, fixing on the transmission. “Robot,” the Kriani radioed, “what happened?”

  “I made the starsleeve believe that it was moving at high velocity in preparation to enter a faster than light trajectory. Then I made it believe it needed to jump immediately in order to avoid an unexpected mass. Given the false coordinates I gave it, the ship performed a single probability jump into the upper atmosphere of the brown dwarf.”

  “My master’s ship….”

  “The proximity of your ship to a standing probability jump meant that part of your ship also entered the jump. Thirty eight percent of your ship is here, falling nearby. There do not appear to be any survivors on that portion of your ship.”

  “Why betray us?” the Kriani transmitted. “Is it because we killed your sibling machines? I thought your kind cared nothing for kin.”